Winter Olympic venues in Hebei set to be completed in 2019

Construction on the major structures for all the 2022 Winter Olympic venues in Zhangjiakou, Hebei province, is scheduled to finish within this year, a Hebei top official said on Monday.

"Hebei will construct the venues and supporting infrastructure for the Olympic Games with high quality," Hebei Governor Xu Qin said in a government work report to an annual session of the provincial people's congress, which started on Monday in Shijiazhuang.

Chongli district in Zhangjiakou, about 150 kilometers northwest of Beijing, will provide eight competition and non-competition venues for the 2022 Winter Olympics, according to the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

As a co-host for the Games with Beijing, the district will hold 50 events among six different sports -- snowboarding, freestyle skiing, cross-country skiing, ski jumping, Nordic combined and biathlon, the committee said.

Construction work for the 65 Winter Olympics projects has started in Chongli, accounting for 85.5 percent of the total, Xu said in the report.

Significant progress will also be made in supporting transportation projects to easily connect the region with Beijing.

A high-speed railway linking Beijing and Zhangjiakou and an expressway connecting Yanqing district in Beijing and the Chongli region will be finished within the year and put into operation, according to the work report.

The travel time between the two cities will shorten to about one hour from the current three hours.

Apart from preparing for the Games, the region also strives to develop its ice and snow industry.

"An industrial cluster for manufacturing ice and snow sports equipment will form in Zhangjiakou," Xu said.

The city has brought in 15 overseas companies in the field from such countries as the United States, France and Finland, according to the government work report.

In this year, Hebei will also boost related industries, including winter tourism as well as sports education and training.